


A World At Your Feet

by rufeepeach



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Modern AU, revolutionary road AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-07-04
Packaged: 2017-12-15 07:59:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/847176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elias and Michelle Gold have the perfect life: the house with the white picket fence, the precocious child starting school, in the perfect town with the perfect neighbors. If he could forget she's resented him since they moved in, and she could forget how badly she wants to live anywhere else, then perhaps the perfection could even be true. But he can't, and she can't, and when both are faced with a much more compatible alternative partner, the cracks in their foundations become gaping chasms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is an AU based on the book 'Revolutionary Road' by Richard Yates. Eli and Millie Gold are based on Frank and April Wheeler, although this story is hardly a carbon copy of that one (mainly because I can't manage that level of cynicism in a Rumbelle fic). It is dedicated to the lovely Lola (chippedcupofchai) on Tumblr, because it's as much her baby as it is mine.

The art show wasn’t going well.

Elias Gold could have guessed this outcome, even though he knew nothing at all about art. Storybrooke was only a small city, without much of a cultural scene, and Millie hadn’t been able - or all that willing, really - to go further afield to find a venue.

Her friend had offered gallery space for a few weeks, to see if there was a potential market for Millie’s work.

There apparently wasn’t.

They stood in the room with the few guests - mostly acquaintances and old friends, not buyers - milled and chattered and drank cheap white wine out of cheaper plastic wine glasses. Elias was, ultimately, too anxious to actually approach his wife. She stood ramrod straight in the middle of the room, waiting for someone to speak to her and waiting in vain, her face slowly draining of colour.

Her work was good, sold alright on the internet, but Storybrooke wasn’t an art scene, and now with the pictures of their town, the sketches of Ben with his friends and of the skyline on vacation, seemed inexplicably small and bland on the cold gallery walls.

She looked small with it, bland and cold and still. Like the one statue she’d crafted, standing limply in one corner, Millie seemed cast in some kind of lesser stone, without value or meaning. For a moment, he couldn’t see a trace of the shining young woman he’d married, the woman he loved. In her place stood someone much older, harder, meaner. Someone without hope.

It was him being a fool, seeing all of that in just this one image of his pale faced, white-knuckled wife. His dreamer’s mind playing its game with him, making him see things deeper than they were. It didn’t make the image any less painful.

He wanted to go across to her, kiss her and hold her and tell her they’d try again elsewhere. Tell her he’d ask around with his friends at work, see if anyone knew of opportunities of artists in Boston. But she’d push him away, and tell him that he should have thought of that sooner, and look so hurt that it wasn’t worth the risk.

He couldn’t fix this for her, not now, not ever.

She’d find a way. She always did. And then she’d smile again, and then she’d be his Millie again, and he’d not be to blame for her failure anymore.

After two hours of mingling and watching his wife slowly crumble, Elias had finally had enough.

“Millie,” he touched her elbow and she flinched a little, “D’you think maybe we should take a walk? Maybe go have a cigarette or something? The art’ll still be here and you look like you need-“

“What, a break?” she snapped, and he winced, “From standing still?” she sighed, her shoulders sagging. The fight drained as fast as it came, “I’m fine, Eli. I really am.”

“Then let’s go, eh?” he took her arms in his hands but she didn’t shift an inch, “We could go get Ben, get some ice cream-“

“And give up on selling a single goddamn picture?” she snapped, “God, Eli, are you that afraid of a little failure?” she hissed the last, aware of the crowd around them. “If you want to go, then go.”

His jaw was tight as he stared her down. He wanted to leave, yes - he couldn’t bear to see his wife hurt so much, see her so chipped and cracked and still, but she always could turn a good intention to a bad one with just a twist of words. It was one reason he’d fallen for her, in the beginning: she was wilful, difficult, ambitious and clever, and could make anything into wit, anything sharp and bright.

He knew that he had been duller, softer, before they met. She was different and special, and he loved that about her.

It just made reasoning with her a hell of a lot harder.

“Come on,” he said, and took her arm. Surprisingly, she let him lead her out into the corridor, with a few careless smiles tossed to friends and potential buyers on their way. She hadn’t moved in two hours: to all concerned they appeared a caring husband getting his wife a drink and a bathroom break.

“What is the matter with you?” she demanded, as they reached a place out of earshot of their guests, “I need to be in there!”

“I can’t watch this anymore,” he said, quietly, “We never should have started you off here.”

“Why not?” she asked, coldly, “You know we haven’t the money for a Boston gallery: Storybrooke was the only option. Are you so much a coward you can’t even stand by me?”

“Are you so bloody stubborn that you can’t see a lost cause?”

They were breathing hard, eyes locked together, neither wanting to move first. “Look, I want this to go well for you, Michelle,” Eli said, after a long, tense silence, “I really do. I want you to be an artist, but…”

“But you don’t think this is going to work. You don’t think I’m talented enough!” she accused, and he shook his head.

“I think tonight was a mistake,” he said, bluntly, “And that there’s no sense in hanging about to watch a train wreck. It’s not to do with your talents, Millie, it’s-”

“What? Bad timing? When is the right time, Eli? Before children?” she shook her head, spread her hands wide, with a bitter little laugh, “Before we move to fucking Storybrooke, Maine? Before I get too old to be young and fresh anymore? Because we’re here, Eli. We’re here.”

“You’re not too old, and Ben won’t stop you from being an artist. Go inside and talk to people, Millie. Go talk and sell things.”

“What about you?” she asked, coldly, although he rather thought a lot of her coldness was about her own anger at herself, and keeping back threatening tears, than her anger toward him.

“I’m going back to the office,” he said, “I’m no asset to you here, I’ll collect some papers I left there and then go get Ben from the Nolans. I’ll see you at home.”

“Fine,” she nodded. “Fine, go.”

“Good luck to you,” he said, a little awkwardly, and pecked her on the lips. She kissed him back, at least, but it was perfunctory, her mind already back in the room behind them.

He left without another backward glance.

—

The show was as bad as Eli had complained of it being: After another hour of awkward silence and lack of interest, Millie had to admit that. Storybrooke was a dull little city in a dull little State, more suburb than centre, with less culture than some of the backwaters she’d seen out West.

But they’d found a cheap, large house here, and Ben’s friends were here, and she’d fallen pregnant so suddenly…

She should have done this sooner, she knew: she’d got caught up in getting married and having a child and raising a family, and now it seemed her time had come and gone.

Maybe if she’d painted that, she thought, she’d have made a better showing tonight.

It was almost ten, and nearly everyone was gone. Those who were still milling about did so out of awkward sympathy for her, she felt, or simply had no place better to go. They were cowards, too, she thought: too weak to even admit that they had no real purpose in being here. Too small to tell her to her face that the dream was over.

She could go back to selling prints online, and sit in the back bedroom, her tiny workspace, and not think on this anymore.

She stared up at what she’d considered her masterpiece, oils on a canvas depicting the sunset over the rooftops from the balcony of their home. She’d left the rooftops in dark grey and black, and made the sky blood red and deep orange, fiery and fierce. She didn’t know what she’d meant to say with it, but it was her favourite work, and she wished someone else had thought so too.

“I love the colours on this one,” a voice, English and smooth, came from beside her. She glanced aside at the speaker, a tall man with artfully scruffy black hair, in expensive dark jeans and a well-cut leather jacket. He was young, fit and almost painfully good looking, his chiseled features nothing at all like the creased, well-worn face of her husband. “They look like the whole sky has been set on fire.”

“Thank you,” Millie smiled, self-consciously tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear, “I wanted a contrast, I figured I needed to go bright or go home.”

“You’re the artist?” he looked surprised, and quickly held his hand out for her to shake.

“Michelle Gold,” Millie shook his hand, and his grip was so warm and firm. “All of this work is mine, actually.”

“I’m Killian,” the man gave her a smile she thought would make any woman weak at the knees, and she smiled right back. “Didn’t know there were any other Brits in Storybrooke.”

“Well my husband’s Scottish,” Millie said, and she was very pleased to see the slight fall in his face at the mention of her marital status. Good to know she wasn’t too old for that, even if the art world seemed to have passed her by, “But I’m from London, born and bred.”

“And what, America’s beaten the Cockney right out of you?”

“You don’t sound too common yourself!” she teased, “Let me guess, Home Counties boy? Cambridgeshire perhaps?”

He grimaced, “Oxford, but you were close.”

“Ha!” she laughed, and the sound echoed through the gallery. She pressed a hand to her mouth to stifle her giggles, and Killian smirked down at her. 

“It’s your gallery, love. Make as much noise as you like.”

“Shh,” she snickered, blushing at the endearment, “I’m trying to sell paintings here!”

“How well have you done tonight?” he asked, curiously, and she could feel the joy draining out of her. He didn’t have to hear it, her face must have told the whole sorry story, “Ah, another victim of Storybrooke and its Philistines,” he smirked at her again, “It’s where they settled, you know. When they came over on the Mayflower.”

This time, she couldn’t contain her giggles, and he grinned to see her laugh so much, “There you go!” he praised, “A smile, that’s much more like it!”

“It won’t be long-lived,” she warned, “not if I go home tonight with nothing to show for it.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’ll happen,” he said, and she shook her head.

“It’s almost closing time, and no one-“

“Ah, ah,” he waved a finger in her face, “Now, Mrs Gold, where would my manners be if I spent a whole evening marvelling at this glorious painting and didn’t take it off your hands at the end? You’d never want to speak to me again!”

“Take it off my-“ she stopped, stunned, “You’ll buy it?”

“And that smaller blue one in the corner, with the swing set in the backdrop. My buyer’s just finishing the sale now, so I suppose you’d not have been told yet.”

She felt like her smile would break her cheeks open, and she had to fight the sudden urge to hug him. Eli had thought it was a lost cause. She couldn’t even deny the vicious little thrill of glee she felt: Eli had been wrong.

“Oh, goodness,” she managed, and Killian raised an eyebrow, “I mean, thank you so much, I don’t know what to say…”

“You’re basically deciding the colour palate of my front room, love,” he said, waving a hand negligently, “no thanks are needed. We’ve been arguing over the shade for weeks.”

“We?” Millie asked, catching upon the word so quickly she was almost ashamed of herself. What did she care if he was living with someone? She was married with a child for heavens sakes!

“Mm,” Killian nodded, his eyes still on the painting in front of them, “My fiancee’s a fan of white walls and bright furniture; I prefer things to have a little more… depth. Richness, I suppose. My father’s house was always like that and I miss it here in the States.”

“My work is hardly classic,” Millie noted. She’d always preferred modern styles over the sort of art she guessed would have hung in Killian’s father’s home, if ‘rich’ was the best word to describe it. 

“Oh, no, I know,” Killian nodded, “But it’ll give us something to work from, so we can compromise. She doesn’t want a gothic mansion and I don’t want an IKEA showroom. We’ll work it out.”

“Well, good luck on that,” Millie said, trying to draw him out of what now seemed to be contemplation of whoever the lucky lady was. She scolded herself for that immediately: Killian was very nice, yes, and she couldn’t be blamed for noticing that he was hardly a chore to look at. But there was a difference between noticing all of that, and feeling a pang of jealousy for the woman he would return home to this evening.

“I just hope she likes it.” Killian smiled, gently, “She can be a hard woman to please, my Emma.”

Millie didn’t know what to say to that; she found herself just staring in his direction, and to her surprise, he stared back. For a long moment, nothing was said, and Millie thought, foolishly, that were there no other people in the way, this’d be a good time for a first kiss.

With a man she met ten minutes ago. It had to have been the wine that they’d been passing out all evening that had gone to her head. She was thinking like a sixteen year old, and at thirty that wasn’t acceptable.

“I’d best be leaving, actually,” she said, finally, “My husband will be wondering what’s keeping me.”

She picked up her purse and made to leave, but he stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Could I possibly get your phone number, Mrs Gold?” he asked, “In case we have any more space for artwork in our new home?”

She flushed a deep umber, but hid it rummaging in her bag for her phone. She never could remember the number, a fact she was now incredibly grateful for.

For a moment, she inexplicably wished she would find a message from Eli waiting for her.

But, of course, there was nothing from him, and she wondered whether it was due to their fight, or because he was working, or because he simply had nothing to say. She wondered how he’d feel, if she told him she’d allowed herself to flirt with a man who must have been at least a decade his junior, and had the best time she’d had in a while.

She turned back to Killian and read the phone number to him. His slim fingers moved elegantly over the keys, and that alone, it seemed, was a similarity with Eli. She’d fallen in love with him while she watched him type, his dexterous fingertips dancing on the keys, when he was a junior partner at the firm in Boston where they’d met, and everything was on the rise.

That was a long time ago. 

She smiled as he finished, and he smiled back. She couldn’t be faulted for enjoying such a handsome smile, could she? No straight woman in the world could have kept a steady heartbeat with the full force of that smile on them.

“Thank you,” she said again.

“Anytime, Mrs Gold,” he seemed to put a little stress on the name, and she got the message.

“Goodnight, Mr Jones,” she said, a little stiffly, and left.

—

Elias felt he should probably feel a little guilty for enjoying his work so much.

After all, he’d had a very promising career before he came here. Ten years he’d lived and worked in the business heart of Boston, a corporate lawyer at one of the biggest firms in the city. He was one of the names to watch, a young man rising through the ranks.

He couldn’t say, though, that he missed it.

People still talked, he knew. About how he’d left so abruptly, about how he’d choked before the McKinley trial, about his crisis and his breakdown. In truth, it was all of it lies spread by enemies who wanted to prevent his return. He had been scared of the McKinley trial - who would want to take on one of the biggest companies on the Eastern Seaboard? Who would want to risk failing something like that? - but he would have stood up anyway.

No matter what Millie believed, he would have done it.

But then he’d have made partner, and been bound to the city forever. He’d have become his father, a man he barely knew who worked well into the night and over the weekend, and never saw his children. Who ended up falling into corruption and sin, embezzlement and fraud, and living his last years behind minimum-security bars.

He’d wanted to prove, once, that he’d not be like that. That he could go all the way to the top, and remain good when he got there. 

The McKinley trial would have taken him high enough to begin to do that, but he’d still never make it home for dinner.

Millie’d been pregnant, and his decision had been clear.

She had never understood that, of course, but then she’d had to bear the rumours of his breakdown, of the nagging wife, of his professional stigma for years since as well. And, he thought, she took it harder than he did.

He was only in the office to finish a document too sensitive to be emailed home and finished there. It would only take a paragraph or two more.

There was a crash behind him, startling him out of his trance. The office was dark and quiet; well, it had been when he arrived. He’d turned all of one light on, and told Ben to sit on the windowsill and count the streetlights. He could have left Ben with the Nolans another hour, but the urge to have his son with him had been too strong. Ben loved the office anyway, with all its drawers to explore, all the paperclips to link into necklaces for his mama, and the high view of the little city.

He might have been stigmatised in Boston, in New York and DC and all the other great Eastern centres of business and law, but Storybrooke’s one and only law firm had given him a partnership almost before he’d even made an enquiry.

He was happy handling small business claims and the occasional civil suit. He got home by six every night, and his son had grown up knowing his father. He had what he wanted.

The crash had come from where Ben was sat: the boy had knocked a plant pot, and had a look on his chubby six-year-old face of guilty glee and fear of what scolding might follow. 

“Oh, what a mess!” Eli had remained silent: the voice was female, Australian, and brought an instant smile to his lips.

Belle French was a secretary, known for living in the office. He shouldn’t have been surprised to see her there, he supposed: she never seemed to go home. First there in the morning and last to leave at night. 

“Ben Gold, did you push this?” she asked, sternly, and Eli didn’t know why but he stopped and watched their conversation rather than interfering.

Something was mumbled, and Belle’s voice came again, “Speak up for me?”

“No ma’am,” Ben said, a little louder, “Foot just slipped.”

“Oh well, that’s not so bad then,” Belle returned, consolingly. “Did it hurt you?”

“No, ma’am,” Ben replied, a little louder.

“Good, then let’s get this cleaned up and go find your dad, ok?”

“Papa told me to sit and wait,” Ben objected, and Eli could just see his boy nibbling his thumb nail, worried about being lead astray.

“You can do as Miss Belle asks,” he said, speaking up at last, and he couldn’t say he wasn’t a little gratified by the way Belle smiled when she looked to him, surprised and happy. They got along well, the pair of them, at work and occasionally when she joined him for lunch. If he were bold, he’d even consider her a friend, and he hadn’t many of those.

“Come on, poppet, there’s a dustpan and brush in the cupboard,” Belle said, taking Ben’s hand without hesitation and leading the now-confident boy across the room. Eli tried not to remember that Millie hadn’t held their son’s hand like that, warmly and kindly, in months. Now when she did, it was always to drag him someplace, or haul him back from the road. Never to gently guide, as Belle did now.

The pair of them set to cleaning up the minor mess that Ben had made, and with a smile that Eli was certain looked disgustingly soft and sappy, he went back to work. It only took another fifteen minutes to finish editing the document, and then he was ready to take his little lad home.

“Okay, you ready son?” he came to where Ben was sat on the windowsill, now with Belle sat beside him. She was showing him how to make some sort of complicated design out of paperclips to form a chained bracelet, and Ben was watching intently.

Ben waved him away with one pudgy little hand, “Shh papa, Miss Belle needs to concentrate!”

He’d waved his papa away before, in just such a way, when Millie was working on paintings for his room and he was dictating the design. But that was a year or more ago, and Millie had always watched him with eyes half full of exasperation at even the small distraction of their son’s whispered comments and keen gaze.

But Belle smiled warmly at him, and giggled, “It’s not so complicated, Ben,” she said, gently, “look.” She passed the twin chains of paperclips to the boy’s own hands, and guided his clumsy movements with her own deft fingertips, until he had the rhythm and the pattern.

“What a skill,” Elias commented, dryly, and then instantly regretted it. The last thing he needed was to insult the first woman outside of school in months to show his son such warmth. Even if she was just a secretary in his offices; even if she was barely a friend of the family, let alone the woman Ben actually needed this attention from.

But Belle just smiled up at him, as warm and bright as the smiles she gave to Ben, “I’m always in the office, Mr Gold,” she reminded him, “And there’s only so much filing to be done.”

“Making fine paperclip art on the company dime?” he chided, but he laughed as he did so, “I thought better of you, Miss French.”

“I’m afraid that this is the only way in which I’m in any way artistically inclined.” Belle shook her head, and corrected a little mistake Ben had made before continuing. “Your wife is an artist though, right? Didn’t you say something about a show of hers sometime soon?”

“Tonight, actually,” Elias said, shortly, and Belle looked up in surprise.

“Then why-“

“Because I have work that needs finishing, Miss French, and my wife can handle her own affairs.” He knew his annoyance, his anger, was seeping into his tone. He wasn’t angry at Belle - who could be angry at all at sweet little Belle French, who taught lonely boys to play with paperclips and held their hands? No, Millie had really gotten under his skin, once again, and once again he was snapping at the wrong person.

This wasn’t him; it had never been him. And he hated that she could make him this way.

He sighed, “Look, I’m sorry, it’s been a long night.”

He took Ben’s hand, and Ben slipped down from the windowledge and handed the paperclips back to Belle.

“No, no,” she smiled, “you keep them, sweetheart. Make a nice bracelet for your papa, okay?”

Ben nodded solemnly, and Elias couldn’t help but smile at the connection between the two. But then, Ben would likely latch on to any even slightly motherly figure, he supposed. It wasn’t as if Millie was the kind to read stories at night and cuddle her child.

He wasn’t being fair to her, he knew, but he was angry and he couldn’t bring himself to give a damn for fairness.

“I’m sorry for snapping, Miss French. I’m a tired old man with a headache, please pay no mind to me.”

“I understand, Mr Gold,” she said, gently, and he knew, somehow, that she did. “And…” she took a deep breath, “It’s Belle. Not Miss French. I’m dull not old.” She laughed at the last part, and he couldn’t help wanting to refute her. She was practically sparkling, bright and young and sweet, and dull was the last word he could use for her. 

But he stayed silent, because married men with children shouldn’t compliment their pretty young secretaries in the office late at night. Not faithful ones, anyway. 

“I’m Elias,” he said, awkwardly, wrapping an arm around Ben’s shoulders and giving a strained little laugh, “although few people these days tend to call me that.”

“Do you prefer it to Mr Gold?” she asked, curiously, and for some reason the question brought him up short.

“Much,” he answered, honestly, and she nodded her head.

“Then Elias it is,” she grinned, as if it were the easiest thing in the world, as if she hadn’t just made herself the first person in over a year to volunteer to call him that. “Now, get this little troublemaker off to bed and get some sleep yourself, I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning.”

She turned, with a final bright smile, away from him and started to tidy the last of the papers left on the desks. Elias needed no more prompting to flee the scene: nothing this night had made enough sense, nothing had been right, and yes, it was time to sleep. Time to wake up tomorrow to a wife who was only quietly scathing, and a pretty co-worker who never spoke to him, and a son with more hope in him than the sad, tired-eyed boy clinging to Elias’ hand.

They drove home in silence, Elias trying not to think and Ben fast asleep in the front seat. 

What he was trying not to think about, however, Elias had to admit was a thornier issue by far. As much as he knew his whole mind should be bent on trying to make amends for the evening’s row with Millie - she never shouted like that, not ever, they were quietly angry when angered at all, never so violent and loud - Elias knew there were other thoughts trying to slip through the cracks. Warmer, softer memories by far, of Belle French and her warm smile, of her easy friendship with Ben and how very, very far she seemed from the shrew he returned home to.

He physically winced at his own word: ‘shrew’ was the last thing a man should call his wife, the beloved mother of his child. Millie could be difficult, yes, and was easy to disappoint, but she was also the woman he had promised to love forever. Good men didn’t belittle their wives and exalt their secretaries in the same thought. Good men drove home in the dark, and thought only of forgiving and forgetting.

Elias Gold had always tried to be a good man.

For the first time in a while, he knew he wasn’t succeeding.


	2. Chapter 2

The phone rang, and Millie’s heart pounded.

She didn’t dive for it - Ben was sipping his juice and Elias was reading the paper, a normal Sunday morning - but she did hasten before her husband could react. She had done all weekend.

It was the gas company, and then her mother, and then a wrong number for the house next door. It was never the call she was hoping for.

Millie didn’t even try to lie to herself: she wanted it to be Killian Jones, asking about another sale, or for a coffee meeting, or simply making sure her phone number was correct. She wanted to speak to him again. If only because, with her quiet, meek husband and a four year old, she missed the give and take of real conversation.

Elias had stopped trying: there wasn’t very much, really, that she had to say to him, nor he to her. Not this weekend, at any rate, after the fiasco of Thursday night. 

She had no qualms about making nice conversation, even making friends, with a man she had something in common with. She was married, after all, not enslaved or dead. 

The phone rang, and Millie answered a little breathlessly, as she had every day since Friday. “Hello?”

“Mrs Gold?” a voice - American, unfortunately, and bored as hell - answered.

“This is she,” she said, trying to keep the annoyance and disappointment from her now-flat tone.

The man was calling from the credit card company, wanting to know about the sale she’d made to Mr Jones and asking if this was to be a regular transaction. She flushed with pleasure when he asked if they should upgrade their family account, although she had to decline: Killian had certainly paid a lot for her work, but it was - loath as she was to admit it - likely a one-time thing.

“Millie?” Elias called from the hallway.

“One moment,” she said into the phone, and then pressed it to her shoulder as she snapped back, “What?”

“New neighbours, mom!” Ben shouted, at the top of his little lungs, “Come meet ‘em!”

“I shall have to call you back some other time, Mr Newman,” she said, politely, into the phone. “Our account shall remain the same for now, I’ll alert you to any changes we need, don’t worry.”

“Of course, Mrs Gold, have a nice day.” The line went dead, and she hung up with a sigh. When she turned, her smile was bright and warm, and she wiped her hands on her jeans as she walked out into the hallway.

“Ah, here’s the lady of the house!” Elias said, and she was surprised when he smiled genuinely at her, and wrapped an arm around her. Surprised, but not displeased: while she knew she wasn’t always the most patient wife, she didn’t enjoy it when she and her husband fought. A part of her always worried he would leave, in the end, although she knew he never would. And she didn’t know what she would do then.

She’d been with Eli, one way or another, for her entire adult life. Through college, art school, their time in the city and now their suburban marriage, Eli was always there. And it felt better, she thought, with his arm around her. Comfortable if not anything more than that.

“Millie, I’d like you to meet Miss Swan,” Eli said, warmly, “Miss Swan, this is my Millie.”

The woman on the doorstep was beautiful, to be sure; a little taller than Millie herself and definitely slimmer, almost to the point of skinniness, with an angular face and carefully, artfully curled blonde hair tumbling down her back and around her shoulders. Her red leather jacket and jeans were casual but clearly expensive, as were her tall boots. Millie felt a stab of unwanted envy, even as she smiled and shook the woman’s hand: slimmer, younger, prettier and richer. It would be impossible, she reasoned, not to feel a little healthy jealousy.

“Emma,” the woman was saying, apologetically, “I’m just Emma, it’s great to meet you.”

“Miss-“ Elias was stopped with a hard look, and smiled, shook his head ruefully. “Emma,” he corrected himself, “has just bought the house next door.”

“Actually, my boyfriend’s the one who owns the place,” Emma said, with a small smile, “I’m just freeloading.”

Elias laughed, and Millie had to fake a titter in response. It wasn’t all that funny though, was it? Was he laughing because the joke was genuinely amusing, or because the teller was hot, young and blonde?

“And where is your boyfriend?” Millie asked, as politely as she could. “Is he making the rounds as well?”

“He was… actually here a minute ago,” Emma frowned, and looked around. Her eyes alighted on something beyond Millie’s view, and her face cleared. “Killian!” she called, with the exasperated tone of a woman used to hauling her boyfriend back to her side. “What are you doing?”

Millie felt a rush of pure ice run down her spine and through her veins at the sound of that name. It could just be a coincidence, she thought, desperately. It could be someone else, someone else called Killian who was moving house and had enough money to buy a house in his own name in this neighbourhood.

It could be, she thought miserably, but she doubted it.

Her pessimism was confirmed a moment later, when the man in question appeared. He was just as artfully dishevelled as he’d been the other night, when they met, and the way he playfully rolled his eyes at Emma made Millie’s stomach turn.

“Killian, meet our neighbours,” Emma said, brightly, “Elias, Millie, this is my Killian.”

“Oh, we’ve met,” Killian shot Millie a devastating smile, and she fought the urge to glare when he shook her hand. He had a young, beautiful girlfriend, she reminded herself sharply. And she was married. She had no right to the jealousy she felt boiling in her gut, no matter how powerful it was. “Millie, right?” he asked, “We met at last week’s art showing?”

“Oh, you’re the artist!” Emma cried, beaming, “You’ll have to come over sometime, and see your work on display.”

Millie managed a smile at that, despite wanting to claw the woman’s face off for envy. “That’d be lovely,” she said, and Elias nodded.

Of course he did. It wasn’t as if the fool had ever been able to tell when she was uncomfortable.

“We are being terribly rude,” he said, “you’re welcome to come inside, we have some iced tea freshly made if you fancy a glass?”

“We were making the rounds…” Emma looked to Kilian, and then smiled, “But yes, we’d love to. Wouldn’t we, Killian?”

“Of course,” Millie thought she must imagine the grimace that flicked over his handsome face as he came into her home. She had obviously imagined his flirting the other night, been an idiot to think he’d had any attraction to her at all. Vain and selfish and foolish, and now she had to watch the illusion crumble.

Elias was showing the guests around, opening the French windows in the kitchen to a glorious July day and pouring out glasses of tea. Ben sat on his chair, his cereal bowl replaced with crayons and a pad of paper, and Millie watched Emma lean over to see what he was drawing, as she lingered in the doorway.

Ben showed off whatever he’d drawn, a tree with a flower or similar, and Emma started talking to Elias about what to do with children in the summer vacation.

That left Killian free to come and stand with Millie, who felt every muscle tense even tighter than they had at watching a pretty blonde discuss childcare with her husband.

“Your girlfriend’s nice,” Millie said, after a moment.

“So’s your husband,” Killian replied, mildly. Then, she heard a smirk in his voice as he said, “Of course, from what you said before I was imagining Marlon Brando in a wife beater so anything was a step up from that.”

Millie let out a startled gasp of laughter, “I said he was waiting for me, that was all!”

“Hm, well I have a lurid imagination. Comes from my work, you know.”

“And what is it that you do?” Millie asked, straining for formality, stunted politeness, and away from the easy familiarity she could feel growing whenever they spoke. There could be no good, she knew, in feeling that intimate with a man who was engaged to be married, especially not with a husband of her own not ten yards away.

“I’m a journalist,” Killian said, with the smile of a man who is both proud of and excited by his work.

“Gossip and fashion?” Millie teased, “Your skinny jeans give you away. Not to mention the wing-tips.”

“You’re a cruel woman, Michelle Gold.” he pressed a hand to his chest in mock-horror, and she giggled. “No, my work centres more on the international section, reporting on location and such.”

“On location in suburban Storybrooke?” Millie raised an eyebrow.

“This was Emma’s idea, said we need stability now that we’re getting married.” Millie couldn’t deny the little thrill she felt, the hope, at the darkness that crossed his face then. This wasn’t what he wanted, the suburban marriage, the two-point-five kids and the white fence. “And at any rate,” he continued, the cloud clearing as fast as it’d come, “I’ve a month or two now wrapping up a series of reports from south-east Asia, and I can do that anywhere.”

“And then you’ll be off again?” she couldn’t keep the wistfulness out of her voice: all she’d wanted, since she was a girl, was to paint and to travel. To be someone else, someone different, someone special and better than this. Someone who no four walls could contain.

Of course, what four walls couldn’t contain a wedding ring and a positive pregnancy test could.

“It depends what Emma wants,” Killian said, blandly. “Personally, I’ve been wanting to revisit Sri Lanka for a while, see how the conflict there looks now from the first hand. But obviously, it’s not all my decision anymore.”

“I’ve never been,” Millie said, and this time she knew she sounded wistful, even dreamy. 

“It’s beautiful,” Killian said, softly. “And brutal, in the North, where the war happened. But then you see something like Sigarya, the bare rock that’s a mountain in the middle of a forest plane, with a lion’s mouth in the side as an entrance and a whole fort built on the flat top, and all that beauty comes back in. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before.”

And Michelle could only nod, because of course she’d never seen something like that. She’d never seen anything at all.

—

Emma Swan was an interesting woman, Elias would say that for her, and good company. Millie, of course, wasn’t much interested in chatting: she never had had all that many female friends, and if she could find a confidante in Emma’s fiancee, then Elias had never been the jealous type. They lingered in the doorway while Emma made Ben’s acquaintance, shaking his delighted little hand and asking him about his picture. 

Ben wanted to be an artist when he grew up. Like his mama.

His mama hadn’t said his drawings were nice, at least not with the genuine enthusiasm Emma had in spades, in far too long. Elias felt an uncharacteristic twinge of anger at that: his boy shouldn’t need affirmation from strangers like Emma and Belle at the office, when his mama worked from home and saw him every day.

But he did, and Elias wondered if there was any way of explaining the problem to Millie without offending her. He thought it doubtful, if he were honest to himself.

Millie barely left her studio for days after Killian and Emma’s visit, save to eat and sleep, and to take the occasional phone call. This was hardly unusual, Elias was sad to acknowledge, but the almost dreamy smile she had whenever she emerged, the way she almost chattered with him at bedtime and mealtimes, they were improvements. She spent as much time as ever locked away on her own, but when she emerged she seemed truly present for the first time in months, perhaps years.

She’d enjoyed her talk with their new neighbor, he thought, and perhaps they’d been in contact since. She needed friends, his wife, people who shared her world view, who could talk to her on the level she would no longer allow him to share in. he should be jealous, he knew, of a dashing younger man making overtures to his wife. 

But if it made her smile so brightly, made her chatter with Ben and with Elias himself, then he’d never been a jealous man anyway. Even if she nursed a crush on the man, he was engaged to Emma Swan and clearly happy with the way things were already. If their friendship made his wife happy, for the first time in too long, then Elias would feign utter blindness.

Five years since the fight between them had begun, and Elias knew that no apology could heal the rift. She loved him, of course she did, otherwise she would have left at the time. That she stayed meant something, everything. But she’d still never forgive him, and he’d still never be able to apologize with enough true conviction to satisfy his ambitious, thwarted wife.

He’d wondered, every day since they’d moved from Boston to Storybrooke, since they’d laid down roots in this sleepy little town and fled the city for good, if he’d done what he did for the reasons he always held up when the topic arose. 

He hadn’t wanted to win, and hadn’t wanted the guilt of knowing a man had lost his livelihood for his excuses. He’d given up the biggest case of his career, and his place in the firm in the process. He’d made his choice, and he couldn’t, even with Millie’s cold eyed glaring, even with the sense of her dissatisfaction lingering in every room of their home, regret it.

Perhaps he was selfish; perhaps he was a coward. But she still didn’t leave, so things couldn’t be as hopeless as they sometimes seemed. And, maybe, a new friend would help to revive the woman she’d once been, the woman he’d married. The woman he’d, for a long time, loved with all his heart.

The woman he hadn’t seen in her for far, far too long.

He picked Ben up from his chair and placed him carefully down on the ground. “Are you up for a walk in the park, son?” Ben gave him a look, the conflicted frown of a small child with the hardest decision they’ve ever made. “We could feed the ducks,” he tempted, “even go via the swings?”

Ben’s face cleared, brightened, and he nodded, as if he’d always wanted to go to the park. Elias nodded, and took his son’s little hand, leading them both to the hallway and finding Ben’s overshirt and shoes, dressing his son lightly for the warm July day before donning his own jacket and shoes. Storybrooke was in the very southern tip of Maine, but that didn’t save it from the notorious Maine chill for most of the year.

Millie often pointed out that New York was warming up for true spring by now, that Los Angeles was warm year round. Elias found it pointless, by now, to argue that he enjoyed the cold, thank you, or that it certainly suited his wife’s chilly disposition. Because such assertions were cruel, and what husband would he be if he were cruel on purpose?

The walk to the park was fifteen minutes at most, and Ben enjoyed half-trotting beside his papa, his little legs moving quickly to match his father’s longer strides. Elias walked slower when his son tired, but he knew Ben could tell, by now, when he was being humored. Smart boy, Elias thought, and one day a cynic. He hoped he could save him from that, but Millie’s hard stares thwarted his attempts. Ben liked to think he could keep pace with his papa, and Elias could deny his son nothing. Even the bag of bread for the ducks was held in his pudgy fist, swinging with every movement of his body. His son would be a confident young man, when he was grown. But, Elias thought with guilty joy, that was years off yet. For now, his son still needed him.

There was a familiar, surprising figure stood by the duck pond when they came upon it, and where Elias might have skirted the place, found somewhere else to stand out of sight, Ben had no such compunction. He broke his hold on his father’s hand, and took off toward the woman at a run. “Miss Belle!” he cried, happily, “Miss Belle!”

Elias allowed himself a moment, a short and entirely unwise moment, to stand and watch Belle turn, surprise and pleasure, instant pleasure at the sight of the boy hurling himself into her arms, all over her pretty face. She didn’t see him, thankfully, and he sighed as if exasperated at his son’s exuberance before following him down the path. It wouldn’t do to let her know that, for a moment, he’d had a pretty fantasy that she was more to him than a secretary from his office.

It was hard to deny his own selfishness, when his mind could flick from sadness at his wife’s discontent with their life, and knowledge of his guilt for that, to dreaming of another woman’s smiles within moments. And with his and Millie’s son within sight, no less.

Belle and Ben were chattering happily when Elias caught up, and she laughed charmingly, tucking an errant strand of dark hair behind her ear as she looked up from Ben to his father. “Elias,” she beamed, “I didn’t- Ben caught me by surprise. He says you’re to feed the ducks today?”

“If he’s good,” Elias stipulated, with a teasing frown down at his son, who had folded himself into his side, his hand back in Elias’, the moment he’d arrived. “And doesn’t accost poor unsuspecting women in the park.”

“I didn’t mind,” Belle shrugged. Her smile was still in place and still, to Elias’ surprise, entirely genuine, even when confronted with an unpleasant colleague and his son. There was not a hint of forced politeness or hidden displeasure in her face or voice: she seemed genuinely happy to see them.

It was nice, Elias thought, more than nice: wonderful. It also made fuel for those fantasies, the ones that a married man shouldn’t have about his pretty secretary.

“You wanna feed the ducks with us, Belle?” Ben asked, excitedly, and Belle looked like she’d say yes immediately, before she remembered herself and looked to Elias instead. He wanted to shake his head, make an excuse and prompt her to remove herself, her dimpled smiles and bright blue eyes, before he could think things he couldn’t undo. 

“I don’t know, Ben,” she said, a little regretfully, when Elias gave no open invitation or sign of welcome, “I might need to go soon.”

“Please?” Ben begged, and that decided it. The boy shouldn’t be denied the company of one of the few good adult influences, the few friends in general, that he had just because his father couldn’t control his own mind. 

“You’d be most welcome,” he said, meaning every word far too sincerely, and Belle’s face cleared, her smile returned in full force.

“Then how can I refuse?” she asked, teasingly, and he grinned in response before he could stop himself. 

She took Ben’s other hand and the bread with it, and Elias walked them down to the side of the pond with a conscious effort not to think of the picture they made. Any who walked past, he thought deliriously, could think them a happy couple with their child in tow, feeding the ducks on a bright, crisp Saturday morning.

And really, few people would have much reason to think otherwise. Millie had kept her distance from the town, mostly, holding herself aloft and aloof, making conversation only in such a way that discouraged repeated overtures. She hadn’t made any real friends despite half a decade in town, and often said – pointedly – that no one would miss her were she to leave.

But then, she always said that the women in town who talked to her despite everything, like Mary Margaret Nolan, were too placid, like cows in the field, willing to stand and do the same thing in the same field every day of their lives. Boring, dull, and generally missing whatever quality Millie looked for in people. That Mary Margaret was so obviously and shiningly happy with her husband, her pregnancy now showing and their whole demeanor radiating growing contentment, was neither here nor there, apparently. Millie judged her contemporaries’ lives as soulless and unfulfilling, and her word was apparently law.

Elias started out of his own gloomy mind, and shook his head: where were these thoughts coming from? He loved his wife, why was his every thought of her hard and cold today?

He glanced over Ben’s head, as the boy hurled a handful of bread into the water for the ducks, and caught Belle’s eye. Her gaze was practically sparking, bright and warm and lovely, and he had to look away in shame at how deeply that warmth settled within him. He would not be that man, that husband. He refused.

But he had to admit that Millie had not looked at him with such warmth in years. He supposed that, were anyone to draw a comparison between the two women, his sharp-tongued wife was unlikely to come out ahead. Just as if one compared himself to Killian Jones, the younger, fitter, richer man would surely win. It was only the trust he had for his wife, and the knowledge of the trust she held for his own restraint, that prevented him from worrying about those comparisons.

He wouldn’t look at Belle, not when she held his son’s other hand, and laughed like sunshine. It was too close to everything he wouldn’t allow himself to want.

Ben broke his contact with them both to better throw the bread, and Elias retreated, knowing that the boy would want to commune with the ducks on his own for a while. His son was a sturdy little boy of four, and far more sensible than most, Elias reminded himself: he could be trusted to stand back a little way and not follow the bread into the water, and if he looked unstable they were close enough to reach him easily in time.

Belle followed with a puzzled little smile, and they sat together on the bench, carefully sat apart with no inch of their bodies touching. Safe distance, platonic and innocent, free from temptation. Elias hated that he had to concentrate so hard on it, knowing as he did that Belle surely wouldn’t appreciate his advances even were he free to try. That thought, cold and sharp as steel, brought him reeling back to himself. He folded his hands in his lap, and watched Ben laugh at the ducks.

“I didn’t realize Ben enjoyed animals so much,” Belle said, after a comfortable moment. She held a cup of coffee in her hands, cradled for warmth between her palms, and she took a sip.

“Birds especially,” Elias said, nodding, “he’s a book at home, Great Birds of America or something, and he’ll sit for hours with it.”

“Ah,” Belle smiled, fondly, “a budding naturalist, then?”

Elias couldn’t help but glance at her, and his smile came quickly. His son was, after all, one of his favourite topics of conversation, and what father couldn’t say the same? “Perhaps.”

“I remember being that age,” Belle said, a little dreamily, “I wanted to travel the whole world. The Savannah and the Himalayas, the Amazon Rainforest. I was obsessed.”

Elias felt the lump forming in his throat, Belle’s tone so exactly the same as the airy, wishful voice Millie had once used, when telling him her plans to travel the great capitals of Europe and paint after college. Of course, that had been before Boston, before their marriage, before Ben. Now when she mentioned Paris and Vienna, there was a bitter, hard undertone.

Another reason to leave well enough alone, he thought bleakly: she was yet another adventurous, brave young woman who he’d never keep up with.

“But not anymore?” he asked, hoping she couldn’t hear how dry his throat had become.

“Oh no,” she shook her head, “I’ve been there, done that, got the bug bites!” she laughed, and he gaped at her, trying desperately not to let her see it. “I had a bit of an adventure when I was twenty-three,” she explained, “it’s… it’s a bit of a long story, and I’m afraid I don’t come out smelling like roses.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” he said, and then felt like punching himself in his own stupid head. What a thing to say, to a woman half his age.

But she was still smiling, another warm little bubble of laughter spilling from her lips, and shook her dark head. She looked down at her coffee cup, her dark curls tumbling down to hide her face for a moment.

“Isn’t Storybrooke a little boring, then?” he asked, trying to regroup, “After all of that?”

“After all of that, a well-paid job as a legal secretary and an apartment above a bookshop are pretty much all I want in the world. Well, aside from running water and Internet access.”

“The bare necessities,” he teased, and she laughed again. He’d get hooked on that sound, he thought, if he weren’t careful.

“Indeed,” she agreed.

Ben’s bag of bread emptied, and Elias saw him crouch by the water’s edge, one pudgy hand outstretched to the birds in the pond. He saw, with little surprise, one of the ducks was brave enough to eat the bread out of his hand. Elias sometimes wondered if there was a creature on Earth who his son couldn’t tame.

“He’s a natural with them, isn’t he?” Belle asked, and Elias nodded. “You said…” she stopped herself, shaking her head, as if she’d suddenly realized what she was saying. Elias, left out of the loop of Belle French’s thoughts, desperately hoped she’d continue regardless. “Never mind.”

“What?” he prompted, but she shook her head.

“It’s a stupid idea, forget I said anything.”

“How can I do that if you said nothing?” he asked, and saw her smile. He pressed his advantage, “For me to do as you ask, you first need to actually say something.”

“There’s the lawyer,” she nodded, but her smile was back, and he’d put it there. He felt an absurd wave of pride wash over him at that. “Alright, I was about to say that if Ben wanted to see any of the things I collected, especially the natural history books I have, he’s welcome to come by. I’ve spent my young life collecting them, and I’m afraid they’re gathering dust now.”

Elias was, for a moment, utterly torn. He knew how Ben pored over he few encyclopaedias he had, how he begged to go to the zoo or the animal centre every weekend, how every drawing he showed his parents was of some creature or another. If Belle was as good as her word… Elias could practically see how his son’s face would light up at the sight of all those worlds of animals and birds, waiting to be discovered and drawn and learned about. 

But Elias also knew how Millie would react, not only to his having an undeniably attractive female friend but also allowing their son to spend time with her. Belle wasn’t like Mary Margaret Nolan or Kathryn Aurum: she wasn’t happily married and building family. Elias could only imagine how he’d feel, if he knew that Millie was leaving Ben with Killian Jones.

Emma Swan would be another matter, of course, but even if they sat him as a couple Elias knew he’d be wary, even jealous. Millie could do as he liked, but he’d not lose his son for anything.

“I’ll ask my wife,” he said, finally, and hating he had to do it. Belle nodded, understandingly, and said no more about it.

Ben would have a better time with her, Elias knew, than he did with the Nolans when they babysat for them. Belle enjoyed his company on his terms, she never spoke down to him or seemed anything less than overjoyed to see him, and Elias knew Ben liked her too. He knew his boy would love to spend an evening reading nature books with a woman who had seen his favourite birds and animals firsthand; who had been to places he’d only seen on the Discovery Channel.

He would ask Millie, and he’d add how in favour he was of the idea: for Ben’s sake, of course, always for Ben.

The boy in question chose that moment to run over and stand between them, and smile, all gap-toothed and happy. “Done papa!” he said, and Elias nodded.

“The ducks seem very pleased, son,” he said, warmly, and Belle smiled with him. “Come on, let’s go home before mama gets grouchy and wants her lunch.”

Ben giggled, the image of Millie with low blood sugar all too easy to conjure, and Elias scooped him up into his arms as he stood. Belle remained sat down, and Elias was grateful for it: it was a tangible reminder that, despite how much Ben liked her and how sweetly she smiled, she was not a part of the family. 

“Say goodbye to Miss Belle, Ben,” Elias said, and Ben waved down at Belle.

“Bye Miss Belle!”

“Goodbye Ben,” she said, and then looked at Elias. Their eyes met, and for a moment Elias felt a bolt of pure electricity run through him, his stomach twisted and knees weak. Like he was in the schoolyard again, smiling at the pretty girl from maths class.

Bloody wonderful, he thought, that would make everything so much less complicated. 

“I’ll see you Monday, Eli.” He would have sworn she blushed, just a little, when their eyes met. But no, no, it was only the chill of the day, nothing more.


End file.
